No one was talking.
Rachel and Sigfried waited, though Sigfried complained repeatedly that he was bored and wanted to blast something. Lucky flickered back and forth above the reflecting lake. A short time later, two figures in Inverness capes carrying fulgurator’s staffs strode into the office. Rachel recognized her friend, Agent Dorian Standish, his shoulder-length hair done up in a multitude of braids, and the lovely, mysterious Agent Melody Briars with her pixie-cut black hair. Her heavy black eye-liner nearly hid the shape of her eyes, which Rachel knew to be almond-shaped like her own.
Agent Briars knelt before Juma. When she moved, the dozens of charms on her bracelet danced around her wrist. Gemstones on a little chain separated each charm. Rachel guessed that these were low-grade gems, each able to hold maybe ten spells.
“Okay, she’s asking him about his mother,” reported Sigfried. “He says he hasn’t seen her since she helped him put his bags in his room, on the first day of school. Now the Agent’s saying that he has to go with her to the Wisecraft offices in New York City. He doesn’t want to, but he says he will, if he can keep Jellybean with him.”
A nervous Juma departed with the two Agents. Rachel could no longer see them, but Sigfried reported that they had left Roanoke Hall and were heading for the docks. Rachel turned her broom and zoomed around the building. Unseen, they followed the two agents and a frightened Juma, who clutched Jellybean tightly. They flew across the commons, around the lily pond, and down the tree-lined walk toward the docks. Agent Standish put his arm around Juma and Jellybean, and they disappeared in a column of light. A second flash, and Agent Briars jumped, too.
The sky was a dove gray now. Mist hung low over the campus, drifting in clumps. It clung to their faces, as Rachel flew them back and peered into the dean’s office. Von Dread and his companions were still speaking with the dean. Nastasia sat to one side, quiet and composed. Rachel wanted to know what they were saying, but Sigfried declared the conversation too boring to repeat.
“Well,” complained Sigfried, crossing his arms, “that was bizarrely anticlimactic.”
“I want to go somewhere and see something.” Rachel gazed up at the spires of Roanoke towering above them. “Are there attics in the school we could fly up to and investigate? If you go back to class, I’m going to do that…unless you have a better idea.”
“GO BACK TO CLASS?” Siggy bellowed.
Several students approaching the main building from De Vere Hall stopped and looked around, puzzled at the source of the noise.
“And waste the superlative moonberry chameleon elixir? Never!” exclaimed Sigfried. “There must be something we can break into!”
Rachel laughed, her spirits rallying.
Rrrrrrmmmmm.
A noise like thunder rumbled over the campus, only it did not end, as thunder ordinarily did. It grew louder. Nor was it coming from the tor. The sound grew alarmingly loud. Rachel looked up. Overhead was a roil of gray and mist-white. Behind this foggy curtain, something moved, ghost-like and indistinct. She squinted, trying to make out what it was.
With an tremendous roar, an enormous metallic object burst from the low-hanging clouds. It had a huge glittering eye and a snub nose like a dolphin. Bird-like in shape, it hung in the air without flapping, like a bristleless. It took Rachel a moment to realize it was a mundane airplane. She had never seen one this close.
“Holy Jove!” Sigfried shouted eagerly. “That’s a jumbo jet.”
“Juma’s mother! She must be doing this!” Rachel shouted back. “She’s a technomancer.”
The jet was still several miles away. Rachel’s thoughts became crystal clear. Using the same three-dimensional matrix of vectors that she pictured in her head when maneuvering at high speed, Rachel calculated its flight path and speed.
It was flying directly at them!
The distance was rapidly diminishing. News glass pictures of balls of fiery death caused by plane crashes exploded in her thoughts. If it struck the hall, everyone in the plane would die, as well as Gaius, Nastasia, and all the other students and staff on the upper school side of the building.
“Sigfried! It’s going to hit the school. We have less than a minute until the collision!” Rachel shouted, turning the broom and flying at the plane.
“Tur lu!” She shouted the cantrip that Mark Williams had used to stop her broom.
The plane did not slow in the least. Behind her, Sigfried had pulled out his trumpet. A blast of silver sparkles swept from it at an unbelievable speed and danced around the plane’s nose. Alas, the accelerating jumbo jet was significantly heavier than the muskrat.
It plowed forward, unaffected.
“Why don’t they pull up?” Siggy shouted.
“I don’t think they can see the school,” Rachel called back, as she sped toward it. Her heart pounded rapidly. Her hair flew everywhere, threatening to blind her. She gritted her teeth and concentrated. “The obscurations protecting Roanoke from Unwary eyes are hiding it. They might not know they’re about to crash!”
“There’s a weird distortion around the nose of the plane, a silver shimmering,” Siggy shouted rapidly. “I can also see it inside, on the engine. Lucky says it’s a spell or something. Should I have Lucky breathe on it, killing everyone aboard the plane?”
Could he do that?
“Not sure if that will help,” she called. “It would still crash.”
No matter how quickly she flew at the plane, if she hit it straight on, it would not budge. It was too massive. But even a large object could be tipped, if enough pressure were applied at the right spot. The nose only needed to rise a tiny bit for the vehicle to zoom over the top of Roanoke Hall. If she dived at high speed and struck the edge of the tail, would it tip the plane upward? That was how a broom worked.
If she flew high enough and dived fast enough, the weight of the two of them together might be enough to tip the plane. However, there was a major downside to this plan.
Neither she nor Sigfried would live through it.
If it worked, however, everyone else would live.
Rachel searched relentlessly for another way, some less final option.
Nothing came.
Briefly, she considered dropping off Sigfried—so that he, too, could live. Without him, however, the maneuver would surely fail. She was not heavy enough.
She would kill herself while gaining nothing.
“Sigfried! We’re going to have to ram it. Even though we are small, if we hit the very tip of a wing or the tail fin, at a fast enough speed, we might be able to alter its course.” She paused and then added, “I can’t put you down. Won’t have enough weight. I’m going to have to kill us both. Sorry.”
“Fly! Fly like the wind, Griffin!” Sigfried grinned maniacally, without any hesitation. “We’ll die heroes! Hit the tail assembly.”
“The what?”
“The big thing that sticks up like a fin in the back,” Siggy directed. “But first…magic! Did I mention I’m a sorcerer?”
His bravery made her heart soar. Rachel angled her broom and flew upward.
“Siggy! Let’s fire every cantrip we know!” she called. “If it swerves, fantastic! If not, we dive in fifteen seconds.”
Letting go of the handlebar, she shouted every cantrip she knew, gesturing accordingly. Behind her, Sigfried shouted cantrips as well.
“Tiathelu.”
“Argos.”
“Obé.”
“Bey-athe. Nothor. Libra. Legaré. Do.”
They soared upward, so high that the oncoming jet was now beneath them. Was this high enough? If she calculated incorrectly, she would accomplish nothing. Or worse than nothing.
She would kill herself and Siggy for no reason.
“The shimmer! It’s breaking up!” Sigfried shouted suddenly. “I think it was the third one you tried. Right after I tried the golden bands…that did nothing.”
“That was the Word of Ending,” she called back. “Let’s try it again.”
She dived. The wind blew their hair straight back. It ripped off Rachel’s mortarboard cap, in spite of the bobby pins with which she had secured it. The cap sailed into the distance, tassel waving wildly.
“Obé!” They shouted together, gesturing.
“Obé!”
“Obé!!”
“The pilot sees the school!” Sigfried shouted excitedly. “He’s terrified. He’s pulling up!”
With a deafening roar, the enormous jet sailed up and over the top of Roanoke Hall. It passed so close to the roof that the wind from its passing rang the bells.
Chapter Thirty-Two:
Hiding in the Couch
Below, students and staff cheered.
Rachel saw Zoë and Seth Peregrine, Eve March and her brother Joshua, the P.E. Tutor Mr. Chanson, and Mr. Badger, among others. Looking behind her, she noticed that Siggy’s elixir was wearing off. He must have drunk his some time ago, which explained why she had not seen him when she had called his card.
She landed her broom a short distance from the gathering of students. That terrible shyness that overwhelmed her in front of crowds threatened her. The air itself seemed to close in around her. Her insides twisted uncomfortably.
“Quick, you take the credit,” she whispered.
“Are you certain?” He stared as if she had lost her mind. His eyes tracked her face, even though she still could not see her own hand. “All that delicious, delicious credit, all for me?”
“Yes.”
“Ace!”
Grinning like a hyena, Siggy climbed off the broom and bowed, accepting the praises of the growing crowd, as Lucky snaked around him. Above, windows opened, and students in upper classrooms along the east side of the building, who had seen the plane heading directly for them, shouted and cheered. Sigfried clasped his hands over his head in a gesture of victory. As the people below rushed toward him, Rachel slipped away.
Flying upward, she circled the pristine, happily un-smashed spires and towers of Roanoke Hall, waiting for the pounding of her heart to subside.
She had been cool as ice when called upon to sacrifice herself and her best friend. Now, her limbs shook. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. Her stomach tied itself into a permanent knot. She felt strangely lightheaded.
Feeling her shaking hands and trembling legs, she wondered if it were safe for her to fly.
She peered into the windows of the myriad towers and belfries, searching for an unused attic. In the top of a six-sided turret to the northwest of the main belfry, she spotted a little hexagonal room that contained a couch, an end table, and a throw rug. She tried the Word of Opening on the window.
To her delight, it finally worked.
When the pane slid open, stale air assailed her nose. Ducking sideways, she flew into the room and collapsed onto the old springs of the cream and rose sofa. Dust puffed around her.
Rachel tried to cover her face but in their super-chameleoned state, her hands did little to prevent the glare of the afternoon from reaching her eyes. Turning over, she buried herself in the crevice where the cushions met the back and waited for her heartbeat to stop racing, for the tremors in her limbs to cease.
For the second time in less than a day, she had been called on to face death. It was hard to comprehend how little time had passed. If she had conjured something in Joy’s room when the Raven appeared, it would not yet have vanished.
Yet those two experiences were nothing when compared to the terror of watching the plane head directly toward her boyfriend. This fear mingled within her with the horror of her grandfather’s tragedy.
Her mother had warned her repeatedly that there was a price to pay for being able to suppress her emotions. When the emotions she had suppressed finally came back, they did so with a vengeance—as if they hit harder on the back swing than they would have had she not ducked the first time.
They were striking back now. As she tried to relax, she grew worse. Her body felt weaker, rather than stronger. Fear hammered her, doubt clawing from within. She felt overwhelmed, lost—a tiny piece of flotsam caught in a tsunami.
If only there were someone she could go to who could make her feel safe—with whom she would not have to keep up her false mask. She would never dare let her boyfriend see her like this. Dread’s voice rang in her ears, denouncing weakness.
Rachel shivered.
Boys did not like girls who were not cheerful.
The roar of excitement outside waxed and waned. Rachel lay motionless, longing for the comfort of Mr. Muffin or Torture the Penguin. A terrible lethargy crept over her, a reluctance to move ever again. Her eyelids fluttered closed. She wondered if she could stay here forever, safe from interference. No one knew where she was.
This fantasy was dashed almost before it had begun. Lucky the Dragon darted in the window and sniffed her, reporting aloud to Sigfried that she had been found. Rachel felt keenly disappointed to lose the anonymity of having a place only she knew, but at least Sigfried would not be worried. After he had behaved so bravely when she informed him that she planned to kill them both, she owed him at least that much.
“Boss wants to know if you are okay,” Lucky asked in his growly voice.
“Yes.” Even saying a single word took a tremendous effort.
“She’s okay,” the dragon announced. “She’s just moping.”
Reducing the gravity of her state of mind to “moping” seemed exceedingly cruel.
Rachel could not find the wherewithal to object.
The dragon flew away, leaving her alone in the sunlit silence. She rested on the couch, face down, her mind drifting. She fell into a fitful dream, scattered with nightmares about demonic planes that blasted through Gryphon Park mansion, killing Rachel’s entire family, while her grandfather looked on, shaking his head sadly.
The dream grew more turbulent. Darkness swirled around her. Rachel found herself unable to move. Beside her, Laurel, Peter, and Sandra struggled. A grinning man with a knife stalked toward them. Laurel screamed, but Rachel could not turn her head. Blood splattered, striking her cheek. She fought to turn, to go, to help, but it was like being stuck underwater and fighting seaweed. The grinning man raised his knife and moved toward Rachel’s throat.
She screamed.
Moonlight shone everywhere. The nightmare vanished. Rachel stood on a meadow of purple and silver flowers. Above her, the source of the silvery light, stood the Elf.
“Fear not, little one,” Illondria smiled down at her. “’Twas but a nightmare. It is gone.”
Rachel ran to her. “I’ve found out such horrible things! My family! My poor grandfather! And there was a plane and the Raven—why do these things happen to me?”
The Elf knelt and smiled into her eyes. “Because you can bear them, dear one.”
A hush came over Rachel, something kindred to happiness.
She whispered, awed, “Can I?”
“Can’t you?” smiled the dream Elf.
Rachel stood blinking in the silvery elf-light. Was the Elf really here, in her dream? Or was this just another dream? The Elf claimed to be able to travel in dreams. Rachel decided to assume it was the real Elf, until she found out otherwise.
“B-but the world is going to end!” Rachel cried, her body trembling. “Mrs. Egg is dead. The demon will slip his binding and destroy the Wall. Everyone will be lost!”
The Elf looked at her with eyes as deep as the roots of the World Tree, bottomless pools of infinite wisdom and sorrow. “That may be, dear one. And yet I still see hope. I see a path by which we are all saved. I see you saving us.”
“Me?” Rachel gaped.
“Is there something you have learned that could help?”
Rachel’s eyes grew wide. “I found out my grandfather cast the binding on Azrael.”
“Truly?” Illondria knelt on one knee, bringing her head closer to Rachel’s. She gazed at Rachel raptly. “Did he leave any instructions? Any clues as to how to renew the binding?”
“No, I don’t thi
nk…” Rachel paused and tipped her head back.
Or had he?
Rachel had found no reference to Azrael or demon, and none to Crowley that seemed apropos, in her grandfather’s journal. Suddenly, she did recall a single reference to another word—a word she had not heard in reference to her grandfather until today.
The entry was written to Rupert Tennyson, a relative of the current Tennyson, the butler at Gryphon Park. This earlier Tennyson, whom her grandfather had always referred to as his squire, had died in April of 1942, during Operation Myrmidon. While aborted by the Unwary troops, Operation Myrmidon had been carried out by a cadre of the Wise, destroying the Adour River base of a cabal of French sorcerers who had been supporting the Nazis.
This earlier entry read:
8th September 1940
Squire:
The binding on E. A. grows weak. It must be refreshed. Should I not return, you must carry on for me. You must confront him, fix your gaze upon his eyes, and pronounce the masterword. This will rejuvenate the spell. The rest I have already done.
The masterword: Myrddin.
The sorrow of her grandfather’s lost cut her anew, opening a gash in her heart. Grandfather had never mentioned Myrddin, told Rachel of his existence, or written the boy’s name elsewhere in his journals.
Yet, he had cast a spell using as the masterword the name of his dead son.
Might that mean this spell was particularly associated with his son? This fact and the description in the journal made it sound as if it might be the clue Rachel had been seeking. But there was no mention of Azrael or Crowley.
Who was E. A.?
Searching her memory, Rachel found a reference, this one from an encyclopedia. The title of the article was: Aleister Crowley, né Edward Alexander Crowley.
Finally!
The masterword to renew the spell binding Azrael was Myrddin!
Perhaps the world could be saved, after all.
• • •
“Rejoice.”
Rachel opened her eyes.
She lay on the couch in the hexagonal tower room. Something loomed above her, silhouetted in the setting sun. She could not see it directly. Rays of sunlight, too bright for her eyes, spilled around it.
The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel (A Book of Unexpected Enlightenment 2) Page 38
